


Trust Me

by likeadeuce



Category: Iron Man (Comic), Marvel, The Order (Comic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-15
Updated: 2010-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way Henry believes what Tony tells him, you'd think he'd never been in show business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust Me

Tony Stark took a sip of his mineral water, set down the glass, dabbed his mouth with his napkin, and said, "Don't worry about it."

"Don't _worry_???" Henry sputtered, too loudly for lunchtime at Spago Beverly Hills -- too loudly for sober people at lunchtime at Spago, anyway. "Don't worry --? How can you tell me not to worry? We got evicted." He lowered his voice on the last part, but there didn't seem to be much point; the people who had been staring at them (tourists) still stared at them, the people who had been pretending not to recognize them (locals) kept pretending not to recognize them.

Or maybe they didn't really recognize them.

Or maybe they didn't really care.

Henry had spent most of his adult life wondering about these kinds of questions. The whole situation was just more extreme, now that he was a superhero. He had always been philosophical about his minor levels of fame and notoriety. But somehow it was easier to get annoyed at people who didn't recognize the men who risked being blown up, every day, so the denizens of Spago could eat their monkfish in peace.

"I'll take care of it," Tony said. "I'll find you someplace better." He reached across the table, rapping his knuckles against Henry's wrist. "Trust me. I'm looking out for you, personally."

"Oh, I bet you say that to all the team leaders."

Henry's answer was supposed to sound flip, insouciant, mock-flirtatious -- the kind of line reading he used to do when he played Tony Stark on television.

But he flubbed it.

He flubbed it, and he knew he was flubbing it. He could actually hear the voice in his head -- _Don't you know who you're supposed to be. . .?_ He even knew who the voice belonged to. Gary Mako, one of one of the _Iron Man_'s frequent directors. A frustrated minor talent who had finally gained some measure of fame, years after the show went off the air, when he managed to drown himself in the (six-inch deep) Los Angeles River. The media that had ignored him while he was alive had spun Gary's death as some kind of metaphor for life in Tinseltown. Unfortunately, Lindsay Lohan was arrested later that week, before anyone could figure out what the metaphor actually was. Fermat's Last Theorem, _Access Hollywood_ style.

It was Gary that he always thought of, at times like this, when Henry's own self-presentation in (to use the term loosely) real life didn't come out the way he wanted it to. Gary never actually gave Henry detailed instructions, or notes, or said anything to him besides, _Don't you know who you're supposed to be? You're supposed to be Tony Stark!_

Now, Henry's one-liner didn't come out sounding like something Tony would say at all. It came out sounding true, and so he repeated it. "You say that to all the guys." Fifty team leaders, every one of them a close personal friend of Tony's. Every one of them promised special considerations. Henry wondered how he could ever have believed anything else.

You'd think he had never been in show business.

"Hey." Tony kicked him, under the table. "You don't have enough problems, you have to invent new ones?"

Henry reached down to rub his knee. Tony wore brutal wingtips, apparently. "I didn't invent the eviction. It happened."

"I wasn't talking about the eviction." Tony pointed at Henry's eyes, then at his own. "You and me, Hank. I'm on your side. You're on mine. Don't worry so much."

Henry had taken enough Hollywood lunch meetings to know the gesture. _Would I lie to you?_

In Hollywood the answer was always, _Yes._

"Listen. Trust me."

Henry sighed. "I do." And, this time just like every time, he was surprised to discover that he meant it.


End file.
